


A Small Taste of Love and Resentment

by foldierdias



Category: My Beautiful Laundrette (1985)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Racism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:28:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28145358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foldierdias/pseuds/foldierdias
Summary: Omar doesn't know why he sometimes feels particularly resentful when he is with Johnny. There's the love for him, much greater than any other feeling of course, but also the quiet awareness of class, of race, and that fateful day at the parade.
Relationships: Omar Ali/Johnny Burfoot
Kudos: 8





	A Small Taste of Love and Resentment

The taste of resentment remained at the back of his throat for days. It was not particularly bitter, nor was it overwhelming, but its sheer presence bothered him. His father, before the bottle tightened its grip, would always say that resentment is the poison of the liberal mind. To not understand that what one has is good enough, and that no amount of cars or women will buy one the happiness or the feeling of belonging so rabidly sought by the lonely immigrant, is a failure indeed. Though now, Omar ran with a slightly different group, and his father and his uncle had always been worlds apart. His uncle believed in the future of Britain, in Thatcher, its past a murky sea of ills he could look past, if only to make a bit more money than the gora neighbor.

No, the resentment hadn’t settled in till Johnny kissed him that first time after a long time. It was a lovely kiss, they were shrouded in darkness and noise that filled the grimy streets of Wandsworth, clasping each other for what felt like years. This was a tender moment, one he had not realized he was waiting for, stealing away a soft, and for once, calm breath. He could tell that Johnny was trying to make out the reflection of some distant light in Omar’s eyes, the color of it, which he once said, was so dark it stole all the light around like a sort of strange gem, and reflected it back _all glowy_. As he walked back to his place, unlocking the door of the cramped apartment he and his father shared, he felt that slight sting as he looked at his father’s sleeping body. As he had grown older, his father had shrunk, smaller and smaller into his bed, until what remained was the frame of a very sick child, with yellowing hair and nails. Papa had been a monolith of an academic, had once wandered and studied the world, and now shunned its very presence, for what he believed, its endless list of failures. Omar had failed him, no doubt, but so had the rest of the world, so Omar felt less bad about it.

He felt it again when he saw Johnny’s old friends eyeing him a few days later as he walked to the laundromat. They had the same old look he had seen on the face of so many Brits at this point in his life, the furrowed brows and slightly quizzical mouth, not sure what to think of him, but not liking him nonetheless; they did not fear him, and they had never bothered to understand him, so it was the same look an explorer might give to the pygmy walking by his jeep, the pygmy who belonged more in the forest than he ever could. Yet, he stopped as he reached the door of his shop- he realized he had seen that look before, on Johnny’s face, all those years ago on the school grounds. They were so young then, but kids are made cruel sometimes by their streets and dining tables, before they even know they can refuse it. Of course, the expression had immediately vanished after their first day together, as they ran about causing all sorts of mischief.

When he saw Johnny at the parade, they were both about seventeen, and had drifted apart in secondary. Omar was busy taking care of his parents, his mother had become more and more unreachable in her grief, and his father was almost lost to the bottle. He knew he had grown up too fast, but felt no way about it, it was simply a matter of reality. He could not pay attention to his studies for the life of him, and would not dare to leave his mum to study for hours at the library. He worried for her, and rightfully so.

It had been a bright day, the clouds thinner than usual, and the wisps swept quickly past the sky as he and his father huddled against a tree waiting for their bus. It was his parent’s anniversary and Omar had convinced Papa that he should buy Mum a bouquet of flowers and some of her favorite chocolates. As they stood there, a great chorus of shouts rose up down the street, and Omar made out a group of men and women in grey trousers and union jack signs shouting their way up the street, like lost gulls over a parking lot. _Must be the BNP or somethin’_ he had thought. They were screaming their slurs, causing a racket, and he could see people opening their windows to shout at them to pipe down or yell louder for them to continue. His father shook his head gravely, retreating again into his quiet disgust of the decaying country. Suddenly he heard a familiar voice, and his breath lurched in his throat, caught in the thistle. It was Johnny, screaming for the wogs to go home, to make Britain white again. Of course, he wasn’t sure if that was what he was actually saying, as at that point he could only really hear the blood rushing in his eardrums, his sweat prickling against his neck. But, he could make out Johnny’s mouth moving, and a mouth that angry had nothing good to say. He knew Johnny had seen his father, because his father had later told him. Papa’s voice had shook and it felt different than his usual disappointment; he had loved Johnny like a rogue son, and had once only wished him the very best.

Omar could not help but think of that fated day at the parade every now and again, and the image had intensified in his head ever since Johnny had made his way back into his life, into his bed. Johnny felt guilty, that much was clear. It came out in the way he scrubbed the floors of the laundromat, the way he smiled at customers, or how he shooed away the kids playing too close to the doors. Or perhaps he did all that for love, but Omar could not make out the difference between the two: love and guilt. Since it was a 24 hour operation, sometimes he would go out for some chips and a nap, and before leaving would kiss Omar’s forehead, a domestic peck, and Omar would have the quick image of the shouting mouth all those years before, and would wince and shift away. Johnny laughed and thought it to be a fear of being found out as a couple of queers, but it was never that, Omar could care less about what paying customers thought.

The days passed on, and there were more worrying prospects on the horizon. For one, the prospect of marriage. He had seen the disintegration of his parents’ and now his uncle’s, and to even think about it was to worry about that eventual outcome. Tania was beautiful enough, and kind too, a rare sort of countenance that was made to be jaded but had kept parts of itself whole through sheer force of will. What Tania needed was an escape, and any form it worked, sex, travel, or education. She was back from her last year at university and it would not be long until she was married off. Though, to marry Tania, he would have to give up Johnny, which he was unsure he could do. Afterall, they were business partners, or at least a master and his lackey. _A foolish master_ , Omar thought, _one that doesn’t take the lackey for a lackey._

When Salim had gotten a beating from Johnny’s boys, and Johnny’s busted face made it evident that he had done everything to stop it, Omar felt that last bit of resentment leave his throat. It had quieted down quite a bit over the year, as they built the laundromat of their dreams, took quiet walks by the Thames that evidently turned into egregious snogging at the men’s toilet, and Omar felt more and more like it was love that made Johnny hold the door open for the old lorry driver down the street, fix the OPEN sign on the shop’s window, or blow bubbles into Omar’s hair with the leftover washer bottles. Whether it was love for the laundromat or for Omar, only time would tell. But he had a feeling he knew which one it was.

**Author's Note:**

> I truly love this movie and how it treated the complex relationship between a gay, brown man, and a gay ex-fascist working class bloke. None of it feels out of the ordinary, and them being gay is not made to be anything more or less. It just is.


End file.
